Searching internal documents is not working. The search service indexes all the documents ok, no errors in the logs etc but no results are displayed

Check the alternate mappings as this usually is the issue. For example if the default mapping is http://sitename.companyname.com/sites/sitename1 it would index but not display the results. Changing the default value to http://server (which is the server name of the MOSS web server) and the Extranet mapping to http://sitename.companyname.com/sites/sitename1 then the results will be displayed.

How to implement "Bing.com" Type Ahead Search in your MOSS portal?

1. Download the Sharepoint AJAX Toolkit here - http://www.codeplex.com/sharepointajax

2. Develop a web part (VS project) to implement Bing.com Suggest type functionality using AJAX, .NET 3.0 and SharePoint Web services (you probably need the real code here huh! Email me if you need more information :)

3. Use the AutoComplete Extender in the Toolkit above by copying all the code out of the AutoComplete folder and paste into your web part project (as created in Step 2).

4. Compile and through errors and warnings find and add missing references, add more code files from the Toolkit as needed. Many common files were needed. Note that you need to set any .JS files to EmbeddedResources.

5. Use the MOSS 2007 Search API to build a ASP.NET Web Service to return a list of results based on input string value (keyword). Note that you need to host this web service within the same website (same port) as the Sharepoint site itself. Also dont forget to grant CAS trust for the Web Service assembly.

6) Post a comment if you successfully created the Bing.com type ahead search in MOSS, using the above steps

When i try enabling Windows SharePoint Services Help Search i get an error - SPSearch (administrator)

If you are horrified by the one line error message saying SPSearch (administrator), dont panic. All you have missed is specifying the domain for that user (whom you selected as the administrator). So instead of entering username in the configuration screen as "Administrator" try "\Administrator" (e.g., DEMOS\Administrator)

AS A RULE OF THUMB, WHEN YOU CONFIGURE SEARCH OR ANY SHARED SERVICES IN MOSS AND YOU ARE PROMPTED FOR USERNAME ALWAYS APPEND THE DOMAIN NAME IN FRONT OF THE USERNAME

People Search does not return any results

Follow the steps below to address the problem around People Search returning no results (even though you know that there are people in the database that match your search criteria):

1) Open Shared Services Administration
2) Click on Search Settings > Content Sources and crawl schedules > Manage Content Sources
3) Select the "Local Office SharePoint Server sites" content source
4) On the "Edit Content Source" screen, Update the Textbox for "Start Addresses" to include a new entry for the URL of your site collection name starting with "sps3://". For example, "sps3://intranet:80"
5) Select the checkbox "Start full crawl of this content source" and Click "Ok"
6) Wait till the indexing finishes. (You can check the status of indexing by accessing this area - "Shared Services Administration: SharedServices > Search Settings > Configure Search Settings"
7) Goto your site collection (for example http://intranet:80) and perform your people search to find results

Free Utility to Tune and Optimize the SharePoint ranking algorithm through a GUI!!

A Microsoft partner call BA-Insight has developed a free utility that gives the SharePoint administrator the ability to tune and optimize the SharePoint ranking algorithm through a graphic user interface. Download the free utility here.

Common Search Crawler GOTCHAS - Crawler complains "Access Denied" as WSS site has form authentication enabled

Many people experience the search not working on a SharePoint team with form authentication enabled. The common reason is that they do not have an extended web application (sharing the same content as the parent web application) on a different zone with NTLM/Windows Integrated authentication. The search crawler accesses to site content with NTLM account. It will get an Access Denied error when accessing to the form-authentication site. If you only use the windows Integrated authentication but still get one of the following errors, please make sure that your Content Access Account has enough (Full Read) privileges on the WSS sites. (Please see our "Grant Permission" section and select the web application using windows integrated authentication)

Error

• http://ragavtestsearch.com.au (Link does not work and is used for illustration purpose only)
• Access is denied. Check that the Default Content Access Account has access to this content, or add a crawl rule to crawl this content. (The item was deleted because it was either not found or the crawler was denied access to it.)

Therefore, you will need a new web application with the same site content as the form-auth site and with the NTLM authentication enabled. How can you do it? You can use the SharePoint feature, "Extend an existing web application". Please follow the steps as below to extend a web application.

Extend the web application

1. Extend the form-authenticiation web application to a zone with windows-integrated authentication (NTLM) enabled
2. Go to Central Administration > Application Management page
3. Click Create or Extend web application and select Extend an existing web application
4. Make sure if the web application field shows the one you have set up the form authentication. If not, click on the drop down menu and select the web application in a popup dialog, e.g. SharePoint - 80
5. Either choose to use the randomly-generated port or assign a port. (The extended web application will be located at this port and share the same content as the original web application)
6. Select NTLM
7. Select No for Allow Anonymous option
8. Choose a zone (e.g. custom)
9. Click OK
10. After the web app is extended, the page will be redirected to the central administration page.
11. To test the site, please access to the extended web application and log on to the site with your search crawl acount.
    

Grant Permission

Please make sure if the search crawl account has access to the new web application. If not, please follow these steps to grant permission

1. Go to Central Administration > Application Management page
2. Click on Policy for web application
3. Click on Add Users
4. Make sure if the web application field shows the one you have set up the form authentication.
5. Select the zone that you extended the web application (e.g. custom)
6. Click Next
7. Enter the crawl account username to Users field
8. Check Full Read for the permission
9. Click Finish
10. To test the site, please access to the extended web application and log on to the site with your search crawl acount.
    

In the next crawl, the crawler will access to the site content through this “secret” NTLM web application. It will be able to get the form authentication descriptor of the content. After the crawl’s completed, you will see search results in your form-authentication site. It’s important to know that the URL of search hit will be based on your form-authentication site, because it’s depending on where you are searching from.

(Thanks to the great tips offered by wsssearch website. You can find more information about this website here)